SCANDALS are mounting at Nomura Holdings, threatening to derail a turnaround plan at Japan’s biggest brokerage just as it is beginning to bear fruit.

Chief Executive Kentaro Okuda and other top managers agreed on Thursday to cut pay after the firm admitted an employee manipulated the bond market, prompting several firms to stop trading with the brokerage.

Less than an hour later, a local news agency reported that a former Nomura worker had been arrested on suspicion of robbery and attempted murder of elderly customers.

The barrage of bad news is likely to overshadow financial results on Friday, when Nomura is expected to report profit rose from a year earlier for a third straight quarter as Okuda’s review heats up. This would mark the longest period of expansion in nearly a decade.

“It’s about sentiment,” said Hideyasu Ban, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, adding that the brokerage will need to ease client concerns about the former employee’s arrest. “Their reputation is at stake.”

The scandals reinforce Nomura’s image as a firm prone to missteps, including data leaks and a multibillion-dollar loss from the collapse of Archegos Capital Management.

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Nomura shares opened lower in Tokyo trading on Friday, falling as much as 2.7 percent. The benchmark Topix fell as much as 1.7%.

Okuda has sought to overcome these setbacks since taking the top job more than four years ago. Nomura led a wave of trades and deals as Japan’s stock and bond markets recover from years of slumber. Okuda has set a goal of doubling pre-tax earnings by 2031.

Instead, the bank is back in damage control mode after a bizarre few weeks.

The investigative arm of Japan’s Financial Services Agency reported in September that a Nomura employee placed fraudulent orders in the 2021 government bond futures market. The trader profited by placing large orders without intending to buy or sell all of them , in a practice called layering. said the guard dog.

The FSA fined the company ¥21.8 million ($190,130) on Thursday. The trader is no longer part of the firm, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

The incident prompted clients to take their bond trading and underwriting business elsewhere, hurting Nomura just as Japan is re-emerging as a key growth area.

At least 10 institutional investors have temporarily suspended some trading activity with Nomura because of the breach, according to people familiar with the matter.

In addition, other customers have taken the company out of debt settlement. That dropped Nomura’s ranking in the corporate debt market, where it fell to fifth in October from No. 3 the previous month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The broker also saw the primary dealer’s “special rights” in government debt auctions suspended for about a month.

“We take this matter very seriously,” the company said in a statement Thursday, while apologizing to customers and stakeholders. “We will continue to further improve our compliance framework and internal controls to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future and to regain trust.”

In response, Okuda agreed to return 20 percent of his salary for two months, while Vice President Yutaka Nakajima and several other executives of the domestic securities unit will take similar or smaller cuts, according to a statement.

After announcing the pay cuts and fines on Thursday morning, things got even more messy for Nomura when Kyodo reported that a former employee had been arrested on suspicion of robbery and attempted murder of two clients. The 29-year-old was working for Nomura Securities when the alleged murder took place in Hiroshima in July, Kyodo reported, citing an unidentified person involved in the investigation.

He is suspected of drugging a client and his wife, stealing about ¥26 million in cash from their home and setting it on fire, according to the report. The couple in their 80s escaped safely, it said.

A Nomura Holdings spokesman confirmed the person was a former employee who was fired for disciplinary reasons, without saying when he worked there.

“It is extremely unfortunate that a former employee of ours has been arrested,” the spokesman said. BLOOMBERG